A Hollywood Affair

THE THEME

Now that I just finished making my oldest daughter’s Bat Mitzvah I would love to share some details of the behind the scenes of what went into designing the event, from concept to completion. My daughter Eliana is very into acting so naturally it felt right to go with the hollywood theme. I feel it’s very important when choosing a Bar/Bat Mitzvah theme to go with something that excites the kid.

THE LOGO

For me, everything starts with a logo. The logo, whether for business or for an event, sets the tone and even color scheme. Because Eliana starts with an E, the E! Hollywood logo felt like a perfect match for me.

I also loved the idea of bringing the word Hollywood into it and it just seemed like a fun fit to change the spelling to HollEwood with the E logo replacing Y.

THE INVITES

Next invitations! An invite definitely gives guests a hint of what’s to come. I chose to do a pop up invite that definitely portrayed the feel of the party.

I added custom stamps as a finishing touch. Here are the designs for the stamps. I needed 2 stamps because the postage ended up being high. In the future I would design based on what I want to pay for postage…since invite couldn’t bend it meant it was considered a parcel and was charged as such.

I also designed seals to seal the envelope. The one I used had the return address written in the black circular border.

THE BAT MITZVAH WEBSITE

Instead of response cards I opted to do a website partywitheliana.com where people can rsvp and get to know Eliana. Of course I customized it to go with my invites and theme. I definately saw that response wise, you have to be more on top of your guests when you have a site. Most forget to do it. However it definitely is a nice touch and allows you to share with your guests much more tha an invite allows.

THE DECOR

Now that invites and site were done (And it’s best to take care of invites right away as making lists and gathering addresses take a long time) it was time to come up with the decor.

I knew I wanted hollywood colors…red, black, gold. I contacted a very talented centerpiece designer named Danielle from party excellence and we came up with a game plan.
We decided on Black and red feathers in LED vases and custom E! centerpieces as well as a big “Welcome to HollEwood” sign when guests entered and big E! logos on either side of the stage.
I contacted Dina from D Squared for the linen and we picked the nicest gold and black velvet cloths as well as some cool red leather cloths for buffet to add a pop of red. Here is the result.

THE PERSONILIZED EXTRAS

Of course it’s also all in the details..Kippas…benchers….sign in books and a sign in mirror (instead of a board) , sunglasses and a giveaway bag modeled after the bloomingdales bag with logo earbuds.

Custom Sunglasses Kippah and bencher Sign in Mirror

Ear buds and case

THE SPEECH

We found a creative way to make even her speech interesting using a powerpoint presentation to illustrate her Dvar Torah.
The concept…what if our forefathers had instagram. Here is a link to her speech complete with the powerpoint images.
And here is one of the powerpoint images depicting her Dvar Torah.

THE MONTAGE

The highlight of the night for the kids is the montage. I love montages but often find myself drifting off when it’s too long and slow and repetitive. So for my daughters Bat Mitzvah I was determined to come up with a creative one. I teamed up with my daughters guitar teacher Lenny Manzo who happens to be a talented videographer and editor and together we worked months on a mini movie/music video. This is a parody of One Direction’s “Best Song Ever” video as well as a parody of Icona Pop’s song “We love her”. I was also lucky to have my comedian friend Elon Gold in it…he was amazing.
Here it is:

THE PHOTOGRAPHS

Of course the most important thing at the end of the day is enjoying the night, even if things don’t go perfectly, and of course the pictures! We were lucky to have Jerry Meyer Studio do our photography and we are thrilled with the results!